Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2026
Abstract
Who regulates the physical and informational risks of scientific research? Who makes sure that researchers keep intensely personal data secret, or lock their dangerous chemicals away safely, or don't haphazardly create superviruses that could kill us all? You could be forgiven for assuming it was, well, a regulator—OSHA or the CDC or some similar entity that can promulgate binding rules and enforce them. But as Doni Bloomfield shows in the fascinating How Science Grantmakers Govern, you’d be (mostly) wrong. Instead, a key substantive and procedural regulator of the risky business of scientific research is, in fact, the funder of that research. Bloomfield’s case study considers the leviathan of basic research funding, the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In the first part of this article, Bloomfield pulls apart how NIH acts as a regulator. The second part of this piece draws out implications in a clearly written and fascinating read.
Recommended Citation
Price, W. Nicholson, II. "Strings Attached: Science Regulation by Science Funder." JOTWELL (2026).
Comments
Originally published as Nicholson Price, Strings Attached: Science Regulation by Science Funders, JOTWELL (August 6, 2026) (reviewing Doni Bloomfield, How Science Grantmakers Govern (Mar. 25, 2026) (unpublished manuscript), available at SSRN (Mar. 13, 2026)), https://cyber.jotwell.com/strings-attached-science-regulation-by-science-funders/. All Jotwell content is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. The Attribution-Noncommercial Share Alike License allows others to use and modify Jotwell materials for noncommercial purposes, as long as they acknowledge Jotwell and the author of the contribution as the source of their material.